


Pas De Deux

by Molly_Hats



Category: Cloak & Dagger (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Oh hey a remnant from when Marvel hadn’t lost all my love and respect, You can tell it’s from awhile ago because it’s in present tense, thats what we call “irony” folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 07:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13853286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Hats/pseuds/Molly_Hats
Summary: “And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and thelaws of motion as well.They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.They leaped like deer on the moon.The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancersnearer to it.It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspendedin air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, longtime.”-”Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut





	Pas De Deux

_Entrée_  
_Literally, “entrance”_

She’s not sure where exactly she’s going. She knows Mother will cut the credit cards off once she realizes, and cash for the hotel won’t last long. She doesn’t have a long-term plan. She walks the streets in naive confusion, unafraid when she really should be.

 

He doesn’t know what he’s trying to do. He’s aimless, smart enough to stay alive but nearly penniless and without any goals or plans. He sees her purse, temptation stealing over him, and he draws nearer to her…

 

In some universes, their meetings are more benign. In one, they meet when an impatient customer demands to see the manager, only to realize that he’s really cute. In another, they find each other as little children, growing up brother and sister. In yet another, they meet while working at a project to help runaways and foster kids like themselves. 

 

In others, their meeting is more tragic. A cop tracking down a dangerous vigilante. A promising ballerina struck by a car. A pair of orphans who meet briefly through the foster care system, only to be torn apart, never to see each other again.

 

This is not one of them. He does not take the purse. The option of planning, little that they used it, is torn from them. 

A curse or a gift. A transformation, a mission, a purpose. A bond.

 

_Adagio_

Dagger. It’s only fitting, since Ty could only be Cloak. She likes the names, the way they fit together.

 

Other people don’t understand. They want to remove her from his “dark and demonic” influence (didn’t most of the Catholic priests around here know about Daredevil’s horribly-kept secret identity as the most Catholic guy in town? Devil motifs--and angel motifs, come to think of it--mean approximately nothing when considering morality). They think he’s using her, but it’s not true. They don’t realize how much she depends on him.

 

She may be flashy, literally and figuratively, but she’s only able to dodge bullets so long. Cloak is quiet, dignified, solid, shielding, and she needs that. In ballet, her favorite movements require the support of a partner. Someone to keep her grounded, but accepting, and as hopeful as their situation allows.

 

The first few weeks are the hardest. Tandy has always bottled things up, never had anyone to talk to really, so she babbles away about nothing and everything to Ty as they curl up together in the shadow of the old church. 

She tells him about her mother, and ballet, and he is silent, assuring her with every line of his body that he is listening with all he has. 

Sometimes he tells her things, short and between ramble-provoking questions. His voice is low, laden with four-dollar-words and the kind of dramatic prose she rarely hears outside of some of her mother’s more cheap gigs. She likes it.

So they talk, and support each other, and when the light gets too much to bear, she pours it into him, leans on him, relies on him.

And he does the same for her.

_Variation_

_Tandy_

Light is cameras flashing, light is a stage, light is the brightness of a studio where mirrors pass the little sun there is around.

Light is eyes on her, light is being perfect, light is smooth skin and expectations and spotless dresses and feeling so exposed.

Darkness is calm. Quiet. Secure, personal, a place where she can curl up and be free of it all. Free of the need to prove herself, free of the need to uphold her mother’s reputation. Darkness is freedom. 

It is in the darkness that she decides to run away. It is in the darkness that she meets Ty.

In darkness, they escape, but now she is light. She will never escape, the tiny opportunities for normalcy snatched away, the light burning her from inside. 

_Ty_

Darkness is danger. Darkness is his parents whispering their worries when they think he’s asleep, dangerous alleys and suspicious looks from cops. 

Darkness is no one watching, no one caring, a place no one knows and no one cares about, where he can slip through the cracks and vanish forever. Darkness is despair and tragedy and never being able to go home. Darkness is the state where everything went wrong. 

Light is hope and a sunny day, a chance to show himself to his best advantage. Light is friends and not needing to talk and being “a bright boy.” Light is safety. 

It is in darkness that his best friend dies. It’s in the light of the streetlights, bright and exposed, that he sees Tandy, practically glowing with her pale hair. It is in darkness that they warp him.

It is the light that lets him find Tandy, helps him survive. Now, it is the light that satisfies him, feeds him, keeps him from losing his humanity and vanishing into shadow and darkness and despair.

_Coda_

Every move is a dance for her, every step a graceful movement, her body and daggers a perfect line. Even her fights are beautiful as choreography, dancing through a rain of bullets like fat raindrops.

When he was little, one of his teachers kept a small ballerina figurine on her desk. Ty would stare at it sometimes, so unnaturally, perfectly pale, one leg extended behind it, arms curved just enough to make a gentle line. It fascinated him, how strange it was.  
He tried to ask about it only after several weeks, when he thought the teacher would listen to him and have patience with his stutter. 

“It’s a ballerina, Ty,” she said, smiling. “It’s a kind of dancer. My daughter, Sydney, danced when she was a little girl.” She looked at it a bit sadly, and Ty wondered then, as he does now, whether it was because Sydney grew up or because the ballerina figurine was such a foreign, strange thing, whiter than even the weirdest mutations in their textbook.

He watches Tandy now as she twirls around the church, smiling wider than he’s ever seen. She doesn’t have pointe shoes, but she doesn’t care. Her ponytail streams out behind her, she glows slightly in the light, and Ty can see a bit of the ballerina in her, inhumanly strange, artificial, unnatural, beautiful, but wrong. And then it’s gone, and it’s just Tandy, laughing and leaping around the chorus’ stands.

She gestures for him to join her, and he hesitantly stands. And they dance together like the fight together, like they help each other, Tandy all art and grace, Ty cautious improvisation and steadiness. Finally, when he finds his confidence, he lifts her to the rafter beams that cross the room, and he watches her, ready to catch her, as she pulls her leg into a--Ty struggles to remember from the long explanations of ballet she gave him months ago--an arabesque. 

She smiles and leaps. He catches her, and she laughs, kissing him gently on the cheek.

Hesitantly, Ty leans forward again, a hand coming up to gently cup her cheek, ready to scurry away at the first sign she dislikes it. 

Tandy smiles and leans forward herself, meeting his lips with hers, wrapping her arms around his cloaked shoulders.

“Cloak! Dagger! This is unacceptable!” 

They guiltily spring apart, Cloak slowly lowering them to the ground. 

“We’re sorry, Father,” Dagger says quietly. 

Father Delago shakes his head. “All I request for your board is respect for the house of God. Is that so difficult, my child?”

Cloak shuffles resentfully, but says nothing. It’s best to leave this to Tandy.

“We are sorry, Father,” Dagger repeats. “We will leave, then.”

“Wait!” Father Delago says. “Stay. Just no kissing in the sanctuary.”

Dagger nods solemnly, and Cloak, who honestly is better at solemnity than Dagger, joins her.

**Author's Note:**

> I love these two so much. Here’s hoping the show does them justice.


End file.
